The Torrevieja’s Hospital is ready to extract stem cells from the umbilical cord

The blood extracted from the cord will be included into a stem cells public bank which will be available to anybody who needs them.

BLOOD EXTRACTION FROM THE CORD, STEP BY STEP:

The circuit starts with the control visits by the pregnant woman to the gynaecology outpatient's service; a professional will inform her about the conditions of the program, which consists of a voluntary and altruistic donation where stem cells are extracted from the cord and taken to a stem cells public bank available to anybody needing it.

The patient will also be explained about the donor exclusion criteria, such as being a minor, having previous infections such as hepatitis C or hereditary illnesses, the use of drugs or a prostitution record, wearing a piercing, etc., among others.


When the pregnant woman arrives to the Torrevieja’s Hospital to give birth, there are other excluding factors for this donation such as a gestation period inferior to 34 weeks; non traditional labours such as in the bathtub, multiple pregnancies with broken amniotic sac for over 24 hours before labour or artificial insemination pregnancies, among others.

Once at the labour room, the midwife or gynaecologist will be in charge of collecting the cord blood (approx. 75ml); it will be placed inside a specially adapted container and then taken to a refrigerator to be transported; from there on, the haematologists will be in charge of its temporal storage and will guarantee the best conditions of preservation for the blood.

The last step will be in charge of the Comunidad Valenciana’s Blood Blank (Banco de Sangre de la
Comunidad Valenciana), which will assume the collection and storage of blood extracted at the Torrevieja's Hospital the same way it does with the rest of the public hospitals in the community.

The aim of extracting the umbilical cord blood is to preserve it at a Stem Cells Bank; this way, it might be used later on to produce new blood cells which are healthy and which can cure people with an ill bone marrow due to a congenital or hereditary illness or to a tumour process such as leukaemia.

Thanks to this technique, which is relatively recent and jet uncommon, patients needing a marrow transplant may search for a donor, both in bone marrow donors as well as in umbilical cord donors.

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